George Wallace, American Independent Party, 1968

Following two terms as Alabama's governor, George Wallace took his segregationist campaign nationally in 1968, running for president as a self-created American Independent. Despite his electoral defeats, in 1968, 1972, and 1976, Wallace's influence on 20th Century politics, particularly conservatism, is hard to overestimate. In addition, Wallace came within 50,000 votes of sending the election to the House of Representatives, and in doing so came closer than perhaps any other modern third party candidate to fundamentally affecting the outcome of a presidential election.

Wallace first campaigned to be Alabama's governor in 1958, and lost to a KKK-endorsed candidate. He tried again in 1962, pledging to protect Alabama against enforcement of federal civil rights legislation and particularly school integration, and won, with the NAACP's tacit support. A southern Democrat, Wallace promoted a moderately liberal economic agenda, but Alabama's social turmoil, and his perpetual place at the center of controversy, overshadowed his economic agenda. Upon his gubernatorial victory in 1962, in which he drew the largest popular majority in the state's history, Wallace pledged: "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

His first test came in June of 1963, only months after his inauguration, when President Kennedy's Justice Department ordered the integration of state schools, including the University of Alabama. Wallace not only refused to enforce the federal demand, but he (along with several armed state national guardsmen; see photo above) literally blocked the path of two black students, James A. Hood and Vivian J. Malone, who were attempting to register for classes at the state university. Only when Kennedy nationalized Alabama's guard to enforce the desegregation order did Wallace relent; his strong stand earned him a national reputation, and a place in history books.

Three months later, in September, Wallace again deployed the Alabama guard and state police, this time to prevent students from entering what were to have been integrated state public schools. In the ensuing chaos, at least one person was killed. And again, Kennedy nationalized the guard to enforce the federal desegregation orders.

In 1965, Wallace was faced with a major voting registration rally and civil rights march through Alabama. Under his command, the state police attacked the voting rights advocates with dogs and fire hoses, as the nation watched, awestruck. Ironically, the national outrage that Wallace's police tactics caused allowed then-president Johnson to secure passage of his 1965 Voting Rights Act, a landmark piece of civil rights legislation.

Meanwhile, in 1964 Wallace had entered a number of Democratic primaries, and did surprisingly well, winning up to 45 percent of the popular vote. The reputation that he earned through his adamant opposition to federal authority in civil rights enforcement, coupled with his successful primary bids in Indiana, Maryland, and Wisconsin, put Wallace in a prime position to compete in the 1968 presidential election.

In 1968, Wallace entered the presidential campaign as a candidate for his own American Independent party. He ran on an anti-federal government, anti-civil rights agenda, arguing that there was not a "dime's worth of difference" between the two main candidates, Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. Wallace competed successfully and won more than 13 percent of the nation's popular vote, and 46 electoral votes.

Wallace came close to sending the election to the House of Representatives for a run-off. If he had won a combined total of 43,000 more votes in Mississippi, New Jersey, and Alaska, or 55,000 more in Missouri, he would have eliminated Nixon's electoral majority. As it was, had Humphrey won less than two percent more in the California election, Nixon's majority would have disappeared. Only twice in U.S. history -- in 1800 and 1824 -- has the election defaulted to the House. Wallace's political power would have been unparalleled had the results tilted slightly away from Nixon.

Stung by defeat, but eager for vindication, Wallace entered the 1972 campaign as a Democrat. (Some say he only abandoned his third party campaign because of a Nixon blackmail scheme involving an I.R.S. audit.) In the midst of campaigning on May 15, 1972, a disgruntled Milwaukee janitor, Arthur Bremer, shot Wallace several times, paralyzing him from the waste down. The assassination attempt ended Wallace's presidential aspirations, although he tried again, unsucessfully, to win the Democratic nomination in 1976.

Wallace's national defeats did not alter his Alabama successes. In 1970, he was elected again as governor, and re-elected overwhelmingly in 1974. He ran, and won, one final time in 1982, and retired in 1987, after completing a scattered 16 year tenure as the state's governor.

Wallace's loud, abrasive, and heartfelt ideology set the tone for the neo-conservative movement that elected Nixon and Reagan. His adamant opposition to civil rights legislation (which Wallace ultimately rescinded, endorsing the civil rights movement and racial equality) was emblematic of growing southern and conservative resentment of federal meddling in state affairs. His antagonism toward the federal bureaucracy was unparalleled, and can be seen in many of Nixon and Reagan's defining speeches and campaign strategies. If nothing else, Wallace, who died in September 1998, is a classic example of a third party candidate who dared to buck accepted trends, only to have his attitude and agenda adopted (coopted, some would say) by America's political mainstream.